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Old 09-06-19, 19:39   #11
Cochrane
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This was a weird movie. On the one hand, it was a lot better than Apocalypse, which was just a giant incomprehensible mess. But on the other hand, Apocalypse was fun exactly because it was a giant incomprehensible mess. This was just a normal bad movie. They improved from "So bad it's fun!" to just plain "bad".

I think Sophie Turner could be a great Jean Grey. Sadly, this movie won't let her. She gets almost no characterisation, no setup to ground her humanity, and an amazing number of plot points happen because someone else tells her to. Also, is the end of the movie implying that she now orbits the earth forever, or something?

I am glad that Jennifer Lawrence decided to start acting again in these movies, after refusing to in the last few. It's still rather weird that these movies decided to bring Mystique in as a hero, but okay. None of the other X-Men get any depth (especially Scott), and I think the screenwriters literally forgot that Storm has a normal name (Ororo), because she's always only referred to as Storm.

The plot didn't really make sense - the aliens appear out of nowhere and have no depth, and the train fight feels like what should be the low point in the middle, not the giant finale.

Who knows, maybe they will do the Phoenix Saga right one day, in the MCU. But this is just another bad forgettable prequel to "Logan", the one and only great non-Deadpool X-Men movie.
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Old 09-06-19, 21:50   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cochrane View Post
This was a weird movie. On the one hand, it was a lot better than Apocalypse, which was just a giant incomprehensible mess. But on the other hand, Apocalypse was fun exactly because it was a giant incomprehensible mess. This was just a normal bad movie. They improved from "So bad it's fun!" to just plain "bad".

I think Sophie Turner could be a great Jean Grey. Sadly, this movie won't let her. She gets almost no characterisation, no setup to ground her humanity, and an amazing number of plot points happen because someone else tells her to. Also, is the end of the movie implying that she now orbits the earth forever, or something?

I am glad that Jennifer Lawrence decided to start acting again in these movies, after refusing to in the last few. It's still rather weird that these movies decided to bring Mystique in as a hero, but okay. None of the other X-Men get any depth (especially Scott), and I think the screenwriters literally forgot that Storm has a normal name (Ororo), because she's always only referred to as Storm.

The plot didn't really make sense - the aliens appear out of nowhere and have no depth, and the train fight feels like what should be the low point in the middle, not the giant finale.

Who knows, maybe they will do the Phoenix Saga right one day, in the MCU. But this is just another bad forgettable prequel to "Logan", the one and only great non-Deadpool X-Men movie.
Reading what I have, it doesn't even connect with the 'corrected' future seen at the end of Days of Future Past.
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Old 09-06-19, 21:54   #13
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True. It also doesn’t really connect with Apocalypse, because that movie implied Jean always had the Phoenix power in her.
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Old 10-06-19, 00:22   #14
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So my overall franchise thoughts:

An inconsistent series in terms of both quality and continuity. They were a series of film that dealt with and reflected real life issues of adversary, prejudice and politics. The majority of the films were great with a few downers along the way, First Class was a great entry for a soft reboot followed by a stronger one with Days of Future Past.

Unfortunately things took a turn after Fox successfully retooling their model of success with R-rated entry spin-offs and careful pre-planned storytelling by forgetting about the titular main franchise, we ended up with rushed and less than stellar results of both Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix which suffered a lot from the behind the scenes drama and ultimately left audiences and critics on a sour note making a lot of the general audience forget the predecessors of the franchise and ending it with a subpar finale and going out with more of a whimper than a bang.

Going forward the hype is firmly there for Marvel to now take the reigns and reboot it, hopefully along the way they don't forget the underlying darkness and themes of the series. I'm excited to see what they can do and how they can make the characters get their due respects.

Last edited by Tonyrobinson; 10-06-19 at 00:24.
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Old 10-06-19, 14:20   #15
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Interesting take! I kind of agree, but let me add some things:

First of all, as a confusing mess of convoluted timelines, full of continuity that only half makes sense, widely varying quality and a near universal focus on too much Wolverine, this franchise was arguably the perfect adaptation of the X-Men comics.

This franchise has been one of the prototypes for the modern success of the MCU, along with things like the classic Spider-Man movies, but since it came right at the start (or perhaps arguably even before) the trend of modern superhero movies, it is full of decisions that made sense at the time but don't anymore. Like the way they refused to have proper costumes at the beginning, or how they weren't willing to go quite as big and crazy as the comics did. The first Dark Phoenix (X3) was a great example of taking a crazy giant story and trying to shrink it down into something more "reasonable". Marvel has spent the last decade proving that actually, you don't need to do that.

Since then, the franchise has been trying to keep up with what others have done with what it started. First Class, Days of Future Past and in particular Apocalypse have all been attempts to tell the big, crazy stories that made the comics and the Marvel movies so successful. They just weren't quite as good at it.

One thing the franchise never learned was how to be good team movies. They never really managed to establish all the characters and their relationships to each other, and make us care about them. The first two movies did alright, but the "First Class" X-Men and their team were not well introduced and often didn't really matter much. Outside of that, the movies had this habit of introducing mutants that were well known in the comics, giving them at most one scene or sequence to shine, and then dropping them or keeping them, but with no idea how to integrate them into any existing team. My favourite example of this will forever be Days of Future Past, where the random well-known X-Men simply essentially do a battle ballet every twenty minutes or so.

Overall, the core franchise helped start the whole modern superhero movie thing, but was quickly overtaken by Marvel Studios, and has been trying to play catch-up, badly, ever since. Fox's lack of any idea of where these movies should go and what they should be has allowed a few absolute gems to squeeze out at the sides (Deadpools and Logan), but overall, it's not been awesome.

Not really sure what I expect from the MCU. I think X-Men is probably better left as an expensive TV show, but I fear it might be too expensive. What I'd love is if the Guardians of the Galaxy meet a space pirate named Corsair in their upcoming next movie…
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Old 16-06-19, 00:41   #16
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My friend and I saw Dark Phoenix today. We thought it was entertaining.
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Old 16-06-19, 15:44   #17
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I went and saw this the other day as a sort of 'goodbye' to the Fox X-Men movies.

I thought... It was a lot better than what the reviews were saying, but it was also the most unremarkable, mediocre, wouldn't watch again type of film. Definitely thought it was worth more than the 20% range on RT though.
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Old 03-07-19, 06:23   #18
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This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I really liked Dark Phoenix, I don't know who spread all that negativity and I don't know why people believe everything other people say (it's so sad...) but this movie didn't deserve it.

Now I can only prey that MCU won't ruin my favourite superheroes series...
I just wish they wouldn't fill it with their signature silly jokes they put every two seconds because that comedy tone would really be a betrayal to all classic Xmen fans (I mean they were always very few jokes and just when there was the right moment, for example Dark Phoenix, which is so dark that there isn't any right moment, included 0 jokes...).


And they would also have to find actors able to replace Patrick Stewart, Ian Mckellen, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy and expecially Hugh Jackman, good luck to them!

I don't know why, but I feel like the X Men in the MCU will never be in the spotlight they deserve, I'm afraid they will be less important than the first squad, the Avengers, and have a supportive role...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cochrane View Post
True. It also doesn’t really connect with Apocalypse, because that movie implied Jean always had the Phoenix power in her.
This, along many other critiques people make, is not true.

When Vuk explains what the Phoenix force is (what created life in the universe...), she said that the Phoenix was specifically attracted to Jean, and if you think about it, it was so attracted to her for a reason...
Also, did you ask yourself why Jean is the only human/mutant that can keep that force without dying? Not even Vuk is able to do that...

Now I'm curious, what did you think when Vuk said that, that the force was attracted to Jean because she is phisically beautiful ?

Last edited by Grizzly Bear; 03-07-19 at 06:44.
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Old 09-09-19, 22:20   #19
Teone
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Ok, I watched this movie tonight but I didn't understand if it was a prequel or a sequel.
Could someone read the spoiler and answer my stupid question, please?

[spoiler] How can Raven die in a prequel and then being alive in the sequel?
I thought Raven and Mystica were the same person. Are they not?
[spoiler]
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Old 09-09-19, 22:38   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Teone View Post
Ok, I watched this movie tonight but I didn't understand if it was a prequel or a sequel.
Could someone read the spoiler and answer my stupid question, please?

[spoiler] How can Raven die in a prequel and then being alive in the sequel?
I thought Raven and Mystica were the same person. Are they not?
[spoiler]
Hopefully I was able to express clearly;

[COLOR="White"]X-Men timeline has ben reset at the end of Days of the Future Past which takes place in 1973, "Apocalypse" and "Dark Phoenix" are sequels of that timeline, they probably take place in late 70's and early 80's. So any X-men movie before Days of the Future Past is irrelevant. Raven and Mystique are indeed the same person. Mystique is just a nickname.[/COLOR]
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